I began my addiction when I was 12 years old. By the time 40, 45 years later, when it, you know, it threatened my life and maimed me in terms of my voice, I was so addicted that I was smoking four packs of cigarettes a day.

I have only one loyalty - to my writing. I never wanted to be the head of a studio or a producer.

Actors always loved props and-so instead of a hat or an umbrella, they feel really comfortable with a cigarette as a prop.

Anyone I think who - that would go through a cancer ward and would see the result of what smoking does, would never, ever think of smoking is sexy again.

The studios have been taken over by marketing people and accountants.

From what I've been able to determine, many of our big stars are addicted to tobacco. They want to smoke in movies for the same reason I smoked as I wrote, which is that they think their performance is going to be better.

I'm not suggesting at all that we take away all of the characters' vices. I am suggesting that this particular vice is so insidious, so nefarious, and so deadly that simply by glamorizing it or poisoning our young adults, and I think it's a very separate category, but in no way am I suggesting that we move on from banning smoking in movies to banning drinking, you know, or whatever else we want to do.